Educational Research Journal ~~1f-?iJf1f::~:¥10, Vol. 19, No.2, Winter 2004
© Hong Kong Educational Research Association
The Postmodern Turn in Counseling:
Implications for School Practice in
Hong Kong
David W. Chan
Department of Educational Psychology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
In examining the postmodern turn in counseling and its implications for school
counseling practice, it is suggested that in postmodern approaches, there is a
change in the use of the narrative metaphor, a shift from the therapeutic focus
on problems to solutions, and a reinterpretation of the meanings of the core
counseling values that sustain the client-counselor therapeutic relationship.
An integrated postmodern approach based on narratives and solutions is then
suggested as a viable alternative to traditional counseling approaches. Finally,
bullying as an example of school problems in Hong Kong is discussed from the
perspectives of the traditional approaches and this integrated postmodern
approach, emphasizing the need for research into the effectiveness of this
integrated postmodern approach to school counseling.
Key words: school counseling; postmodern approaches; Hong Kong
Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to David W. Chan,
Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University
of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected].
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David W. Chan
The second half of the 20th century has witnessed radical changes in
Western culture, changes that have been described as representing a
paradigm shift from modernism to postmodernism (see Geertz, 1983;
Gergen, 1985, 1991). It is said that practices developed in the modernist
era have now become outdated and incongruent in this postmodern era
when the inevitable movement toward globalization requires that
theorists, practitioners, and researchers accept greater flexibility and
inclusiveness in their practices to accommodate diverse populations and
cultural settings. Indeed, it appears that no area of human endeavor has
been left untouched by this paradigm shift. The arts, the natural sciences,
and the social sciences are now questioning their basic assumptions
regarding the nature of reality, the impact of culture and technology,
the essence of humanity, and the meaning of life. Specifically, in these
domains, the paradigm shift has initiated changes that challenge the
dominance of scientific knowing, and give equal status to and recognize
both scientific and narrative knowing as ways of describing the world
and human life (Bruner, 1986, 1990). Yet, in view of the traditionally
more privileged status of scientific descriptions, the undervalued
narrative mode tends to be given more attention in postmodern
expositions.
In the counseling profession, many practitioners influenced by this
paradigm shift have started to question the dominance of traditional
counseling approaches that have their basis in the medical model, which
assumes a real world with preexistent truths that could best be discovered
by scientific methods and inductive logic (see Freedman & Combs, 1996;
McLeod, 1996). Specifically, the postmodern turn in counseling can be
viewed as changes characterized by an erosion of the foundations for
objective knowledge as well as an increasing recognition of multiple
perspectives. These changes as embodied in postmodern approaches
highlight the use of the narrative metaphor, the focus on solutions rather
than problems, and the broadening or reinterpretation of the meanings of
counseling values that underlie the therapeutic relationship.
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Metaphors and Counseling
In line with the medical model of diagnosis and treatment, traditional
counseling approaches employ mechanistic or organismic metaphors that
treat clients as defective machines or pathological organisms (McKenzie &
Monk, 1997). Using the faulty machine metaphor, counselors aim to locate
and repair defects in the machine, be it a steam engine or a computer. In
this manner, counseling is viewed as the process by which counselors attempt
to identify and label problems in the client, employ techniques and strategies
to correct the deficits, inadequacies, and malfunctions within the client, and
help the client develop competencies and skills. The counselor is encouraged
to take up the expert role, with expert knowledge to be transmitted to the
client who is impaired by disabilities or deficits. Counseling success is
then measured by the extent to which the counselor's expert knowledge is
accepted, as evidenced by new skills, correct or rational thinking, and
effective problem solving.
Equally prevalent in traditional counseling approaches is the pathological
organism metaphor. One example is the "peeling the onion" metaphor
(McKenzie & Monk, 1997). Using this metaphor, counselors aim to cut
through the protective defenses of a client like cutting through the layers of
an onion to expose the inner core or essential self of the client. These layers
or defenses have been put up in the client's growth and development to
protect the inner self from harm and pain. Thus, counseling is the surgical
peeling away of the outer layers to expose the inner core and release the
true feelings of the client who has been dissociated from his or her life force
or passions. In this connection, the extent to which the client is able to
express his or her inner truth, authenticity, and spontaneity is the measure
of success in counseling. While this organismic metaphor can be viewed as
pathology or problem focused, there are variations that are more positive.
One notable example is the developing organism metaphor in which the
natural development of an organism's growth into maturity, like the growth
of an acorn into an oak tree, is compared to the process of counseling that
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provides the approp1iate contexts and conditions for the client's development.
Interestingly, these traditional humanistic notions of human potential and
growth are paradoxically being vindicated by postmodern notions and
approaches to counseling.
The postmodern forms of counseling represent a rejection of modernist
practices that are based on the mechanistic and the organismic models. One
approach in postmodern practice uses the narrative or story as the guiding
metaphor (McLeod, 1996). Contrary to the view that this is something
new, the narrative or story metaphor has long been associated with traditional
or modernist counseling. The analogy between the process of counseling
and storytelling is highlighted by, for example, the description of
psychoanalysis as "talking cure," and the development of a "conversational"
model of therapy (Hobson, 1985). Many modernist theorists have also
employed the narrative metaphor to make sense of aspects of their therapeutic
work (e.g., Berne, 1972; Gustafson, 1992; Polster, 1987).
However, it is only the postmodern approaches that have brought into
sharp focus the association of the narrative metaphor with meaning-making
and social construction (see Freedman & Combs, 1996). In this regard, the
nanative metaphor is well suited to describe postmodern approaches that
do not aim to discover the truth. The narrative metaphor is also compatible
with the postmodern assumptions that objective reality is not knowable,
that all knowing requires an act of interpretation, and that knowledge is
socially or consensually constructed. Essentially, a narrative has the
advantage of a temporal dimension that emphasizes order and sequence. A
narrative also embodies an active protagonist who represents an image of a
person or agent through time, and who can reflexively monitor the story he
or she tells. More importantly, in line with postmodern thinking, a narrative
is always selective and does not encompass the totality of one's lived
experiences, so there are always some isolated experiences that are unnoticed
or unstoried. The selection of life events to be storied, however, is powerfully
shaped by dominant discourses that are sustained by taken-for-granted
assumptions and shared viewpoints. Thus, people make meaning of them
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and of their lives through storying their experiences, and their stories are
not merely reflections of lives but are constitutive of lives in that stories
shape people's lives and their relationships with others (White & Epston,
1990). They experience problems when their narratives do not sufficiently
represent their lived experiences, or significant aspects of their lived
experiences contradict these dominant narratives. Using the narrative
metaphor, counselors assist people develop alternative stories as opposed
to dominant but unsatisfying stories, clarify the choices they wish to make,
and re-author their stories that they will experience as more helpful (see
Berg & Dolan, 2001; Winslade & Monk, 1999).
From Problem to Solution
Irrespective of the metaphors employed in different counseling approaches,
it is also said that the paradigm shift from modernist to postmodern
approaches is also associated with a change of therapeutic focus from
problems to solutions (O'Hanlon, 1993). For example, traditional or
modernist approaches based on psychodynamic therapy are evidently
pathology-based. The psyche is central, being regarded as ill or disturbed,
and as in an emotional state in need of healing. Thus, the person is the
problem in these approaches. Other approaches based on learning theory
are also problem-focused and emphasize problem solving. The problems
shift from pathologies to dysfunctions or deficits in thinking or behaviors.
Again, the problem is still in the person. Counselors endorsing these
approaches will analyze or understand the client's problems and develop
solutions, often by coaching the client to think more rationally, to learn new
behaviors, or to abandon failing behaviors (see Corey, 2005; Prochaska &
Norcross, 2003).
Unlike the traditional approaches that are problem-focused and search
the causes or explanations of problems, postmodem approaches shift the
therapeutic focus from problems to solutions, searching for the seeds of
solutions in the client's repertoire of strengths and inner resources (e.g.,
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DeJong & Berg, 2002), This shift is based on the fundamental belief that
reality is in part a social construction, created and maintained through the
use of language (Guterman, 1994). Thus the client may frame certain events
as problematic through language, and experiencing these events as problems
is reinforced by the way the client thinks about and describes these events.
Just as the client can construct problems, the client can also choose to
reconstruct difficulties in manageable and even positive ways. Consequently,
by viewing the problem as not residing within the person but as external to
the person, the client can begin to construct life without the problem (White,
1993). Further, within this framework, neither insight nor emotions are the
focus, although emotions are acknowledged and validated (see Lipchik,
2002). What are central are the client's goals, the sense of personal agency,
and the construction of stories of success and competence based on the
client's goals and strengths.
Therapeutic Relationship
The paradigm shift also includes changes in the conceptualization of the
values that underlie the therapeutic relationship between the counselor and
the client. These changes are characterized by the shift from an almost
professional detachment in psychodynamic forms of counseling, through
the unconditional positive regard of the humanistic tradition of personcentered counseling, to a more vibrant relationship that is higher on sharing
with the client (Kaplan, 1992). Despite differences in emphasis, most
traditional counseling approaches expect that counselors exhibit behaviors
such as congruence, acceptance, and empathy to establish a satisfying and
trusting relationship with the client (Rogers, 1951, 1961). In postmodem
counseling approaches, many of these same core counseling skills and values
first postulated by Rogers as essential for therapeutic relationship between
counselor and client are rediscovered and retained. However, the postmodem
approaches have given new meanings to these counseling values, which go
beyond the original humanistic conceptualization.
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Rogers ( 1961) listed six core conditions that need to be provided by the
counselor in the therapeutic relationship with client in order that constructive
personality changes can occur in counseling. While it is generally accepted
that the presence of these core conditions are necessary for counseling to
succeed, his assertion that they are also sufficient for successful counseling
is controversial. Briefly, Rogers (1961) specified that the congruent
counselor and the incongruent client have to be in psychological contact.
The counselor experiences unconditional positive regard for the client as
well as an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference,
and these experiences are communicated to the client. On the basis that
Rogers' six conditions are met, it is asserted that improvement in constructive
personality change will come about naturally. Essentially, when Rogers'
noncontextual conditions or variables of personal qualities are emphasized,
they can be conceptualized as three facilitative conditions of congruence
(genuineness or authenticity), unconditional positive regard (acceptance,
respect, nonpossessive warmth), and accurate empathy (understanding).
According to Rogers (1961), congruence or genuineness is the opposite
of presenting a fac;;:ade knowingly or unknowingly. The congruent or genuine
counselor will present himself or herself as a person, avoiding stereotyped
counselor behaviors, keeping professional distance and boundaries by being
spontaneous but not uncontrolled, being consistent with values, words and
actions, and being willing to share personal experiences helpful for the client,
with the consideration that not all thoughts and feelings are expressed. Thus,
the counselor is expected to maintain a professional relationship in which
the counselor knows how to be present and at the same time keep his or her
distance. In postmodern approaches, congruence or genuineness is also
highly valued, although it is believed that professionalizing a relationship
as in traditional counseling may reduce counselor genuineness (Payne, 2000).
In postmodern approaches, genuineness is given more elaborated
meanings in the concept of transparency (Payne, 2000). While Rogers'
(1961) concept of genuineness emphasizes the counselor's self-monitoring
of feelings and reactions and not hiding them from the client, the postmodem
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transparency concept highlights not only the self-monitoring but also the
open acknowledgment and sharing with the client the limiting factors from
culturally and socially formed assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors, as well
as issues related to the counselor's ethnicity, social class, age, gender, and
sexuality. Thus, taking gender as an example, a male therapist will
acknowledge to a female client in the session his limitations as a man subject
to his living in the male culture, and he will check out with the client whether
she feels the operation of such attitudes in his counseling with her.
Rogers' (1961) conceptualization of unconditional positive regard refers
to the counselor's respect for the client, which entails a full acceptance of
each aspect of the client's experiences as being a part of that client, and
there are no conditions of acceptance. On the other hand, the counselor also
respects the client as an expert in the client's life, even though the counselor
may have more expertise in how changes more satisfying to the client can
be effectively made. In postmodern approaches, unconditional positive
regard or respect has also acquired special meanings (DeJong & Berg, 2002;
Payne, 2000). Essentially, counselors abandon their expe1tise stance, and
adopt a not-knowing stance such that the relationship is more like that of a
friend who puzzles with the client over what will be happening when the
problem does not occur or happens to a lesser degree (Anderson &
Goolishian, 1992). In this way, the counselor communicates full respect
for the client with a not-knowing stance, and the client and the counselor
collaborate to co-construct the future.
For Rogers (1961), communicating accurate empathy is another core
condition for therapeutic relationship and effective counseling to occur.
Empathy involves the counselor entering into the client's inner world and
seeing the world from the client's perspective. The counselor tries to
understand the client's experience as the client understands or experiences
it, and reflects the feelings and even the meanings of the experience verbally
to the client. In postmodern approaches, empathy is conceptualized as
engaging at an emotional level rather than seeking to show understanding
of emotions as in traditional approaches (see Presbury, Echterling, & McKee,
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2002). This engagement involves validating any feelings that the client
expresses and responding, verbally and non-verbally, to the client's
communication. What is deemed to be important is that clients feel they are
understood, especially with respect to what they want, or what their goals
and aspirations are, rather than what counselors think would be desirable or
what the causes of the problems are. It is believed that understanding what
clients want will usually lead to their feeling of being understood (DeJong
& Berg, 2002). Moreover, rather than aiming to facilitate clients to meet
idealized notions of needs and self-esteem as in traditional approaches,
postmodern approaches aim to achieve the measurable goal of enriching
lives (Payne, 2000). These enriched lives are constructed by clients, who
will find greater hope, more possibilities, and more personal agency and
creativity in enriched lives.
In summary, the postmodern approaches share with the Rogerian
approach the belief in the primacy of the person. With this view, it is believed
that oppression should be overturned, that people have the inner potential to
deal with their lives, and that each person is to be respected as a person of
worth. However, Rogers (1961), with modernist or structuralist assumptions,
also believed in helping people find their true authentic selves or who they
really are. In contrast, counselors endorsing the postmodern approaches,
especially social constructionist counselors, believe that clients' selves are
socially constructed and cannot be known in that way even though they
should be free from oppression. Thus, instead of finding true selves, clients
seek to create who they want to be, which could be different from what they
have been. For example, in traditional emotion-focused counseling, the
commonly asserted aim of helping people get in touch with their feelings
presumes that it is desirable to be emotional, and there is only one way of
achieving it (see Corey, 2005). In other words, there is an assumption that
a person can move on only after coming to terms with what has happened.
In contrast, postmodern or social constructionist counselors do not privilege
a specific viewpoint, and they do not go along with encouraging people to
fit into defined concepts or to seek personal growth toward the ideal selfbood
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(e.g., Freedman & Combs, 1996; Payne, 2000). Rather, the expert knowledge
that defines needs, selfhood, self-esteem and stages of development is
believed to constrain options, leading counselors to perceive deficits and
assumed inadequacies. Thus, the aim of postmodern counseling is to assist
people to refuse development toward an ideal imposed by social and cultural
influences, and to enrich life whereby people are responsible for developing
new ways rather than personal development (Payne, 2000).
Despite that both the person-centered approach and postmodern
approaches value the therapeutic relationship, the postmodern counselor
would take issue with the person-centered counselor on elevating the
counselor-client relationship as primary and all-important, and as one
above all other relationships with significant others in the client's life,
as this elevation would serve to exclude and marginalize the contribution
of the cl.ient's relationships and life outside the counseling room (Payne,
2000). Indeed, the postmodern counselor would regard that the client's
therapeutic relationships should be with the people who are important
to the client in his or her real life. As a consequence, one implication of
this reconceptualization of counselor-client relationship is counselordecentering in postmodern approaches, which is in sharp contrast to the
person-centered approach where the counselor is regarded as central in
providing the core conditions for the client to effect constructive
personality change (Besley, 2002; DeJong & Berg, 2002; Freedman &
Combs, 1996; Payne, 2000).
Postmodern School Counseling Practice:
Solutions and Narratives
School counseling practices have also undergone great changes in the 21st
century (see Galassi & Akos, 2004). Under postmodern assumptions, schools
can be conceptualized as providing many opportunities for students to have
different relationships from those they have in families, and more
opportunities for them to continuously reconstruct and re-evaluate their
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identities, like texts being re-read or stories retold, with no notion of either
true or false selves (Sklare, 1997; Winslade & Monk, 1999). However,
students could also be entered into stories that have potential to totalize and
pathologize them. These stories are infinitely variable, depending largely
on the political climate of the school concerned and the theoretical orientation
of school personnel in locating the roots of the problems of students. Thus,
troubled students might be entered into stories about truancy or school phobia
in terms of their early relationships. Paradoxically, the same students might
be viewed as disaffected, when teachers' fault for not making learning more
relevant to them is emphasized, or as disruptive, when the effects of peer
group pressures and the development of anti-school attitudes are considered
relevant. Troubled students could also be storied as both socially dangerous
in terms of youth crime and delinquency, and as individually disturbed in
terms of diagnostic categories such as dyslexia and hyperactivity. Invariably,
the dominant discourses in schools tend to focus on deficit-based descriptions
of students (see Gergen, 1990, 1991).
Thus, it is to be expected that students who might benefit from school
counseling have usually been entered into one or more of these problem
stories, none of which has the capacity to fully explain their distress since
their problems or difficulties are seldom single issues. These stories might
also get circulated in the school communities, shaping the identities of these
students such that they could be labeled distressed, troubled or troublesome.
The modernist agenda invites counselors and teachers to think in terms of
identifying causes of problems and dealing with these problems by applying
their expert knowledge. Given that student problems generally have a variety
of explanations attached to them, the frequent association with deficits or
personality traits attributed to students will likely put the blame on students
rather than suggest a solution (DeJong & Berg, 2002). In contrast, the
postmodern notions offer viable counseling alternatives. For example, when
a student asks for help with a specific problem, a perceived failure or a
weakness, the postmodern school counselor could assist the student to meet
his or her preferred goals by avoiding assumptions of deficits, promote
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David W. Chan
various possibilities for building solutions, and co-author a new story of
competence (Sklare, 1997; Winslade & Monk, 1999) ..
While it is possible to adopt a solution-focused approach to the resolution
of school problems, it is also beneficial for students when counselors could
draw on narrative ideas that illuminate the oppressive potential of the school
to enter students into pathologizing stories. The narrative approach seems
particularly helpful for students whose lives are very complex and for whom
there is no single solution that will not endanger their social selves. The
narrative approach will also supp011 the development of school-wide support
groups to help students combat common school problems such as truancy,
bullying, eating problems, and mood problems, and to validate students'
alternative stories, supporting these students in changes they have made
and wish to maintain (Murphy & Duncan, 1997; Payne, 2000; Winslade &
Monk, 1999). Thus, efforts to integrate, for example, the solution-focused
ideas of de Shazer (1988) and the narrative ideas of White and Epston (1990)
are commendable and appropriate, as the principles of both the narrative
and the solution-focused approaches are closely tied in with the social
constructionist and post-structural philosophy (see Furman & Ahola, 1992;
Milner & O'Byrne, 2002; O'Hanlon, 1993). Nonetheless, an integrated
solution-focused and narrative approach will adopt a non-expert, curious,
respectful, and not-knowing stance, focus on building solutions rather than
searching for the causes of problems, and assist students to visualize a
relatively problem-free future to linguistically create such a future or to cocreate an alternative and more satisfying story based on student goals and
strengths to the problem-saturated story.
Postmodern Implications for School Practice in Hong Kong:
The Example of Bullying
School counseling practice in Hong Kong is perhaps not particularly different
from practices in other parts of the world, considering that all counselors or
guidance teachers (taking up the roles of counselors) working in school
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settings have to address a similar set of common problems confronting
today's students. However, in Hong Kong, given the large student population
and the relatively small number of school counselors, the search for a
practical, time-sensitive, and effective approach is particularly relevant
(Chan, 2000). Postmodem approaches applied in the school setting as brief
interventions for school problems are appealing in their emphasis on not
privileging the school perspective, on their respect for student strengths and
competence, and on empowering students to create new stories based on
their goals and strengths. The applications of the solution-focused brief
therapy approach, and the narrative therapy approach have already been
briefly discussed as viable and alternative approaches to traditional
counseling approaches in the Hong Kong school setting elsewhere (Chan,
2000, 2004). Thus, an integrated approach based on solutions and narratives
will likely be particularly promising for some of the specific problems
confronting students in Hong Kong schools. The problem of bullying is
discussed below as an example of such problems viewed from the perspective
of traditional counseling and the perspective of the postmodern integrated
approach.
In many parts of the world, acts of school violence and specifically
bullying have raised great concerns among educators and school practitioners
(see Newman-Carlson & Home, 2004). In recent years, bullying has also
become a common problem in Hong Kong schools, with some severe
incidents turning into court cases. It is likely that school counselors or
guidance teachers will increasingly be called upon to provide counseling to
students referred because of their emotional reactions to being bullied at
school. A counselor using traditional approaches might be tempted to view
the problem as one of the student's low self-esteem and his or her need to
develop skills in physical and emotional self-defense. The counselor might
be further tempted to infer that the student's distress could be partly attributed
to the student's denial of his or her feelings about the situation, and the true
feelings of the student should be encouraged to find full expression in the
counseling room. On the other hand, the counselor might also be tempted
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178
to infer that the student's failure to resist to bullying is related to immaturity,
which might in the first place invite bullying. Along this line, the counselor
might assume that with self-acceptance, the student might begin to move
toward a more mature capacity to defend himself and herself, and to learn
effective ways to cope with bullies. In adopting this view, the counselor,
unknowingly and inadvertently, is putting the blame on the victim and
defining the situation in terms of the student's assumed and imputed
immaturity, inadequacy or pathology.
In sharp contrast, different thoughts might govern the approach of the
counselor endorsing the integrated postmodem view that includes the notknowing stance, solution building, and story retelling. The counselor would
take extra care of the trust issues that would inevitably come up when the
student as a victim is subjected to the goals and agenda of the counselor,
which would remind the student of the traumatic or abusive relationships in
which the student has been violated by the bully. In adopting a not-knowing
stance, the student's perceptions, feelings, and preferences are invited, valued,
explored, and employed to determine the direction and process of counseling.
Further, the counselor would think it appropriate to ensure that the school
prevents the bullying, that the bully is offered counseling to allow him or
her to address and change his or her bullying behaviors, that the victimized
student is helped to recognize that he or she is not to blame for the bullying,
nor has he or she the responsibility to develop new personal capacities to
overcome the abuse, such as learning to fight back or to stand up for himself
or herself. In case that the parents of the victimized student are urging for
fighting back and the learning of self-defense, the counselor would invite
parents to address the cultural discourses permeating this perspective on
bullying, which might prevent parents from honoring their child's refusal to
be drawn into a vengeful and violence-reciprocating position. While the
counselor might assist the student to feel better about himself or herself,
counseling would not be based on the assumption that the student has invited
the bullying or has been inadequate in resisting or overcoming the bullying.
By addressing power issues, the student is assisted to develop a clear
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179
perspective on what he or she has been subjected to, and a clear recognition
that the distress and the feelings of powerlessness are appropriate and
inevitable given the imposition of bullying. In this way, the new and
alternative story will not be written with the counterplot around weakness,
failure and the need to improve fighting skills, but around recognition of the
reality of terrorization and injustice and their effects on the student's identity.
Further, to address bullying and other abusive behaviors within school, the
counselor would involve the wider social context of the school. One strategy
would be to initiate conversations that encourage the school-wide community
to take responsibility for a safe physical and emotional environment by
implementing school-wide policies and procedures to prevent the abusive
behaviors.
With the brief introduction of the integrated postmodem approach based
on solutions and narratives, and the discussion on its promising application
on the problem of bullying in Hong Kong schools, it is not intended,
however, to privilege this approach over all other conventional and
postmodern approaches, which might have merits from different
perspectives. While there are likely to be some anticipated and unforeseen
difficulties in applying this approach to specific problems (e.g., Yeung, 1999),
this integrated approach could be particularly appealing for working with
specific problems arising from multiple causes and problems emerging from
dominant social discourses confronting students in Hong Kong schools.
Nonetheless, the effectiveness of this integrated approach in helping students
with specific problems warrants careful examination and future research.
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